You may have noticed that there are lots of new posts from Chinese on the forum, especially the market section. Most of these are adverts for goods or services offered in bitcoin, some are cries for help(all but a few are barely readable).

These are my English students, who have been separated into groups forming "companies". For them to pass my class they must, as a company earn a specified amount of bitcoins.

The point of this is for them to get experience "running" a business with all the problems associated with it, but specifically to interact with westerners (the majority of bitcoin holders) over the internet, and where possible transact some commerce. It also shows that they have done work(penalising group freeloaders).

For all of these students, this is the first time they have interacted with westerners over the internet, nearly all of these have no computer skills, out of more than 300 of them only about 10 actually have computers(with often heavily restricted internet access). For them this feels like they are dealing with aliens, many if not most cannot grasp that except for the language, doing business with westerners is pretty much the same as with chinese.

Please be kind to them, forgiving of their English( all their English education has been focused on passing tests, not using the language), give them some friendly ( plainly worded) advice where you see fit, give them ideas for what they can do. If they are not making sense please tell them, and please dont make fun of them.

What this does for bitcoin and the community is it brings in some fresh goods and services ( mostly cheaper ones), and it increases exposure of bitcoin in general, but especially in China where it is sorely needed. As I have said in one of my articles, there are no Chinese miners, all they have to offer are goods and services, if this is a success it should be an overall boon to the bitcoin economy.

I am very grateful and think it is a great contribution to the bitcoin community. Bridging cultures with a sustainable currency;

I got new music, translating services at unbeatable prices and with time, will have more ideas I am sure. I am looking forward to the positive ramifications this will have that are yet unknown at this time.

Thanks for the infopost! Was wondering what was going on, but figured you were behind it.

I'll try and help out where I can, being civil, etc but unfortunately I don't think I need anything they're offering.

Thats fine, if you dont need anything then you dont need anything. Dont do charity with these though, make them work for their btc. The closer we grt to end of term the more desperate the lazy students will become, and I am sure many of them will resort to begging. Rewarding begging will do nothing to help them learn.

No worries, I only remembered from a bored weekend a while back skimming through off-topic!

Back on topic (for Project Development) couldn't we use this situation for an additional bit of bitcoin promotion in China (and Chinese-speaking communities)? Do we know how well-known bitcoin is in China? A few things I can think of for Nefario's students to do are:

a) Translate a good English (or other non-Chinese) introduction to bitcoin into Chinese.b) Develop a plan to promote bitcoin, using the text from step a.c) Implement the plan from step b.

Elsewhere people have promised bounties to Nefario's students for funny pictures, some involving bitcoin. These could be used as well. Anyway, I'd be prepared to pay a 5 BTC bounty for each step above - though I'd need help with step a, as my non-English language skills are non-existent...

I'd certainly be OK with the students using Google translate initially, though I'd hope that they'd at least check the results and edit where necessary. I'd also give the results a quick pass through it, though I wouldn't trust it (or me!) enough to pass judgement - I think that should fall to a native speaker (Nefario? Any other takers?)

They should all go get loans from a bank, buy lots and lots of 5970 based systems and start mining. The system will pay itself off after a couple months of 24/7 mining and after that the only outgoing is electricity and conversion fees.

They should all go get loans from a bank, buy lots and lots of 5970 based systems and start mining. The system will pay itself off after a couple months of 24/7 mining and after that the only outgoing is electricity and conversion fees.

It's not clear that mining as we know it today is going to continue to be profitable. They might never see their initial investment repaid. Never mind that they're not going to find a bank that would offer such a loan, especially with a good interest rate, especially in China.

I just read the whole thread in the off-topic section. This is so SO cool.

Dozens if not hundreds of Chinese students ready to do anything I want for a few dollars (or less) of BTC.

ANYTHING.

I'm thinking of offering a bounty for some kind of huge publicity stunt that makes the news in every major Chinese news source.

I think the rules will be that they can do it in absolutely any way they can dream up. The only requirement is that it gets coverage in all the major Chinese news sources. I would offer 12 BTC, which would allow two companies to work together to come up with something sufficiently insane and large-scale.

My only concern is that I might get Nefario arrested. That would suck. What do you guys think?

I just read the whole thread in the off-topic section. This is so SO cool.

Dozens if not hundreds of Chinese students ready to do anything I want for a few dollars (or less) of BTC.

ANYTHING.

I'm thinking of offering a bounty for some kind of huge publicity stunt that makes the news in every major Chinese news source.

I think the rules will be that they can do it in absolutely any way they can dream up. The only requirement is that it gets coverage in all the major Chinese news sources. I would offer 12 BTC, which would allow two companies to work together to come up with something sufficiently insane and large-scale.

My only concern is that I might get Nefario arrested. That would suck. What do you guys think?

I think I'd add 5 or even 10 BTC! (I don't have dacoinminster's coverage requirement, but I'd throw in an additional 10 BTC if it made most major Chinese news sources).

Oh, and I strongly agree with dacoinminster's sentiment - we'd be foolish as a community not to see this as a golden opportunity to promote bitcoin in China.

I just read the whole thread in the off-topic section. This is so SO cool.

Dozens if not hundreds of Chinese students ready to do anything I want for a few dollars (or less) of BTC.

ANYTHING.

I'm thinking of offering a bounty for some kind of huge publicity stunt that makes the news in every major Chinese news source.

I think the rules will be that they can do it in absolutely any way they can dream up. The only requirement is that it gets coverage in all the major Chinese news sources. I would offer 12 BTC, which would allow two companies to work together to come up with something sufficiently insane and large-scale.

My only concern is that I might get Nefario arrested. That would suck. What do you guys think?

Promote smart - not loud. If you do something crazy big like that before anyone has any idea of bitcoins, then it will just confuse or scare the government/people.

Arrested, I don't think so, but I would certainly get fired. You don't need to break a law for that to happen. Think of the headline "college teacher forces students to promote western technology & ideology", I would be BBQ'd.